Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 23, 2009

I will conclude with some remarks about the rights of animals. When it is asked whether animals have rights, and whether human beings have duties to them, the question, I think, is partly moral and partly verbal. Let us consider the moral question first. Hominum causa omne ius constitutum.)

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 30, 2011

But when a moral being is feeling a pleasure or pain that is deserved or undeserved, or a pleasure or pain that implies a good or a bad disposition, the total fact is quite inadequately described if we say 'a sentient being is feeling pleasure, or pain'. Pleasure is good when, and only when, it is deserved.

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Critter News

OCTOBER 26, 2008

I came across this 2005 book from the Society & Animals Journal titled Confronting Cruelty Moral Orthodoxy and the Challenge of the Animal Rights Movement. Readership: This book will be of interest to anyone who wishes to understand the animal rights movement in England, the United States and Australia.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 4, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. In fact, animals used for food do suffer a great deal. Now there is no doubt that the actual treatment of animals used for food is immoral, that animals are made to suffer needlessly.

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Animal Person

JULY 26, 2009

There has to be something I can do to reduce all of the suffering of the animals we use as food, I thought. I mean, where do they get their morals from? How do they know what's right? That would be like brainwashing, and that's just not right. I recently watched Earthlings and cried the whole way through.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 4, 2008

There is no inconsistency in rejecting plant rights while accepting animal rights. If Smith thinks that plant rights and animal rights stand or fall together, then he is confused, for there is a morally relevant difference between plants and animals, namely, that only the latter are sentient.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 9, 2009

A third of a century ago, when the modern animal-liberation movement was in its infancy, Martin published an essay entitled “A Critique of Moral Vegetarianism,” Reason Papers (fall 1976): 13-43. You will, therefore, agree with Martin about moral vegetarianism but not about Christianity. One is health.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 15, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. Most moral vegetarians list fish and fowl as animals one should not eat. First, it may be argued that only animals who can feel pain are not to be eaten. What should our moral attitude be toward eating members of these species?

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10,000 Birds

JULY 4, 2022

The Lesser Coucals sometimes try to argue with Chestnut-winged Cuckoos about the morality of having other species raise their chicks (The Lesser Coucal Species Committee also likes to point out that the species neither invaded Ukraine nor ever voted for Donald Trump – they can be a bit boring in insisting on always being on the good side).

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Animal Ethics

JULY 24, 2012

The initial attractiveness of utilitarianism as a moral theory on which to rest the call for the better treatment of animals was noted in an earlier context. Because animals are sentient (i.e., Because animals are sentient (i.e.,

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Animal Person

OCTOBER 26, 2009

I immensely enjoyed "EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED" (even on the big screen) and eagerly anticipated "EATING ANIMALS" by Jonathan Safran Foer. Finally, if you know someone who gravitates toward the philosophical issues around our use of animals, this is a good book. Ever, in fact. Not great, but good. Imagine being served a plate of sushi.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 30, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. The Argument from Human Grain Shortage All of the clearly moral arguments for vegetarianism given so far have been in terms of animal rights and suffering. Nobody wants existing animals to be slaughtered.

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Animal Person

MAY 30, 2009

Bea directed me to an interview with Dr. Elizabeth Parker , the "chair man " (my emphasis) of the Animal Agriculture Alliance at CattleNetwork, which apparently is "The Source for Cattle News." If any "drastic measures" are employed, they are to remove animals from suffering, not to impose our dietary choices on others.

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Animal Person

APRIL 26, 2009

Vamsee Juluri, Professor of Media Studies at the University of San Francisco, takes me back to graduate school when he writes of the importance of the stories we tell ourselves in " Use Free Speech to Celebrate Animal Life, Not to Enjoy Their Suffering." They certainly depict cruelty to animals, right? What do you think?

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Critter News

APRIL 26, 2009

Last night, I watched "Milk," the film about assassinated gay rights activist Harvey Milk. I not only learned about Harvey Milk, but about the early stages of the gay rights movement (which is ongoing today when one looks at all the right-wing flutterings over gay marriage.) Animals can't do that.

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10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 17, 2014

Now, in 21st century America, we’re entertaining new considerations, in keeping with our modern understanding of wild animals and conservation. A new willingness among scientists to consider certain moral and ethical implications with respect to wild animals, where previously utilitarian ideas prevailed, including ideas of intrinsic value.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 2, 2011

I propose that the moral significance of the suffering, mutilation, and death of non-human animals rests on the following, which may be called the overflow principle: Act towards that which, while not itself a person, is closely associated with personhood in a way coherent with an attitude of respect for persons.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 2, 2008

Eat right. Stop supporting unnecessary animal cruelty in all of its forms. Now that 2008 has arrived, I'd like once again to encourage new and old readers alike to make this the year that they stop supporting animal cruelty in all of its forms. What counts as eating right? b) Stop eating animal products. (c)

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 29, 2008

Once a definite social movement got under way in the West with its objective the restricting of man's treatment of animals, it moved with relative rapidity. Moral philosophers began to regard it as an obvious truth that it is wrong to treat animals cruelly. But not so far as seriously to limit man's domination of the world.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 25, 2008

" Observe the transition from slave to animal. If all pain is evil, as Bentham thought, then the pain of animals—assuming only that they can feel pain—ought not to be ignored in man's moral decisions. " but "Can they suffer?" It is enough that they are capable of suffering.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 7, 2008

This is a moral principle, and states that 'the interests of every being affected by an action are to be taken into account and given the same weight as the like interests of any other being'. This, however, is precisely what factory farming does.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 31, 2006

Eat right. Stop supporting unnecessary animal cruelty in all of its forms. What counts as eating right? Stop supporting unnecessary animal cruelty in all of its forms. What can I do to stop supporting unnecessary animal cruelty, and is it difficult to do so? b) Stop eating animal products. (c) Lose weight.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 11, 2007

Animals as well as humans can suffer pain, deprivation, and unwanted death. An exception for vegetables is thus consistent with the categorical imperative; an exception for humans with respect to eating animals is not. Vegetables cannot. Hence there is a very fundamental and relevant sense in which we cannot harm a vegetable.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

An enormous volume of material has already appeared on the conditions under which animals live and die on factory farms, and more is almost certainly on the way. In other words, we become vegetarians, not through any decision of principle, but through being unable to bring ourselves to continue to dine upon the flesh of animals.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 20, 2008

Ethical vegetarianism is the thesis that killing and eating animals is morally wrong whenever equally nutritious plant-based alternatives are available. Virtually everyone agrees that: (1) It is wrong to cause a conscious sentient animal to suffer for no good reason. Cohen, The Animal Rights Debate , p.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 24, 2009

To the Editor: Re “ Animal, Vegetable, Miserable ,” by Gary Steiner (Op-Ed, Nov. In fact, a whole lot of semi-vegans can do much more for animals than the tiny number of people who are willing to give up all animal products and scrupulously read labels. It’s all good advice from the point of view of doing better by animals.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 31, 2011

He has volunteered to kill a deer cruelly, ineptly and with an outdated weapon that causes additional suffering to the deer. I’m tired of hearing people who enjoy killing justify it with specious moral platitudes. Animals suffer when killed. BRANIGAN President, Make Peace With Animals New Hope, Pa.,

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 31, 2007

It means the following: There are differences and there are differences; some differences make a moral difference and some do not; morally speaking, everyone is equal—in spite of our nonmoral differences (such as height, weight, age, sex, nationality, religion, skin color, and intelligence).

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Animal Person

JUNE 8, 2009

You can buy some extra time by presoaking the animal in a basin of ice water.)" Actually, I didn't quit neuroscience as a result of the experiences described, but I did quit working with animals. But that's neither here nor there -- I'm very supportive of animal research in principle. It "guarantees humane treatment?"

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2007

A column entitled "Ag Industry Threatened by Animal Rights" appeared in today's High Plains/Midwest Ag Journal [ HPMAJ ]. The column, which you can read here , is a call to arms to factory farmers to fight back against those individuals and organizations working to protect farm animals from the abuses inherent in factory farms.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 17, 2011

A great number of animals owe their lives to our intention to eat them. If we value animal life and animal comfort, therefore, we should endorse our carnivorous habits, provided it really is life , and not living death, on which those habits feed.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 31, 2006

Consequently, no turkey has suffered or died on my account for the past quarter century. They can't solve the problem of animal suffering all by themselves, so they throw up their hands in defeat and go on eating meat. But that's not the only way to look at it, and I would argue that it's not the right way. Surely not.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 24, 2006

Macy's should do the right thing and take out television and newspaper ads inviting anyone who purchased such a falsely-labeled jacket from any of its stores an opportunity to return the jackets for a full refund. Each semester when I teach Contemporary Moral Issues, on the first day of class I begin with a survey. But is it really?

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Animal Ethics

MAY 24, 2009

For pastoralism belongs rightly to another and earlier phase of the world's economics, and as civilisation spreads it becomes more and more an anachronism, as surely as flesh-eating, by a corresponding change, becomes an anachronism in morals. Henry S.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 18, 2006

My personal perspective regarding Animal Ethics is not fully formed, which is one of the reasons why Keith and I felt it would be a good idea for me to post on here. I have always felt a sense of connection to animals since as far back as I can remember, and the current manner in which they are treated in factory farms disturbs me.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 2, 2008

Kristof, who takes note of the trend represented by the animal welfare proposition on the ballot in California this fall. It’s time that our tax dollars no longer finance the inhumane conditions—for workers and animals and the climate—of factory farms. Mr. Kristof is attuned to issues of human suffering and injustice.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

I suspect that many regular readers of Animal Ethics are already vegetarians. That's because those who read Animal Ethics with regularity know that there are many compelling reasons to adopt a vegetarian lifestyle. One cannot produce eggs or dairy products on a large scale without the wholesale exploitation of animals.

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